Last year, then-President Donald Trump announced a plan to pull out of Afghanistan and signed a deal with the Taliban that limited U.S. military action against them. President Joe Biden then announced that the last troops would leave by the end of August.
A number of Democrats in Virginia’s congressional delegation agreed with Biden that the U.S. largely achieved its initial mission in Afghanistan by killing Osama Bin Laden and by initially degrading al-Qaida’s fighting capabilities. Republicans in Virginia’s U.S. House delegation blamed Biden for what Rep. Ben Cline, R-6th, called “a diplomatic and humanitarian disaster.”
Rep. Bobby Scott, D-3rd, is the only remaining member of Virginia’s U.S. House delegation that unanimously backed a use of force resolution days after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. Scott, now the dean of Virginia’s congressional delegation, says that after 20 years of war it was time for the U.S. to leave.
“American troops cannot be asked to stay mired in an endless civil war and be asked to sacrifice more American lives and resources, when it is clear the Afghan government could not and would not stand on its own, even after 20 years of training and support,” Scott said.
Rep. Rob Wittman, R-1st, the second-longest serving member of the Virginia delegation, said “The collapse of Afghanistan’s government marks one of the greatest foreign policy failures in recent American history.”
